Proposal Information for 2014A-0494

Title: Comparing Stellar Populations of Galaxies across the Hubble Sequence

Abstract: We propose to investigate the spatial distributions of stellar populations within a statistically significant set of galaxies, representing the full range of luminosity and morphological type. By obtaining new, near-infrared images of these galaxies to complement existing optical and near-UV data, we can self-consistently probe the older stellar populations, dust extinction, and metallicity, and ultimately determine ages of and age variations within the stellar components of these galaxies. This information can then be used to compare stellar populations between luminous and faint galaxies of the same Hubble type, and between similar luminosity galaxies of different types. Galaxy candidates for this study were drawn from the Nearby Field Galaxy Survey (Jansen 2000), which provides U, B, and R optical images and both nuclear and globally integrated spectra. Near- infrared J, H, and K_s surface photometry can break the age-dust- metallicity degeneracy in galaxy spectral energy distributions (SEDs), but existing 2MASS image data is not sufficiently deep for this purpose. We therefore request observing time on the Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) on the CTIO 4-m \textslBlanco telescope to secure J, H, and K_s images reaching out to the optical radius for 12 NFGS galaxies observable from Cerro Tololo in 2014A. Specific results expected from this sample are the distributions of age, dust, and metallicity across galaxies of differing type and luminosity. These distributions will allow us to address systematic trends in assembly history that can confront simulations of hierarchical galaxy formation.